Cats are infinitely adaptable, and Selina accepted quickly enough that
she was in an “Owl cave.” She didn’t like the feathered occupants as
much as the bats she knew at home, and she decided they better understand
straight off what cats did to birds where she came from. So she walked
up to the one perched on the stalagmite and stared unblinking into its
hostile yellow eyes. She held this cold stare for some time, and then,
very slowly and deliberately, blinked.

The owl squawked in alarm at the warning of a feline predator preparing
to pounce. That it was coming from a human woman was immaterial; every
instinct told it this was the mannerism of a cat stalking prey. The
owl squawked again, flapped its wings in a flurry of agitation, and
retreated to a far point in the cave.

Catwoman snarled as she turned her head slowly right and left, a low
feral warning to any other feathered pests to stay away, Kitty bites.

She then went about investigating this
strange new cave. There was only one workstation, and Bruce’s password
Thomas—Martha—Justice didn’t let her in. The drawer behind the
keyboard where Bruce kept computer disks held a small round mirror, a thin
blade like a miniature batarang, and a delicate silver straw. Selina
merely raised an eyebrow and closed the drawer, then she proceeded with her
explorations. There was a wetbar where the chem lab would be in the
Batcave, a wetbar stocked with conspicuously expensive brands… and right
next to the vodka and vermouth sat a little pot of pickled ginger. It
was the garnish Selina preferred in her martini, and she’d never once seen
anyone use it before she introduced them to the idea. Unconsciously,
she licked her lips at this subtle, silent hint that, owls or no, her
counterpart might have a place in this cave.

The supposition was confirmed almost immediately when a deep, cruel voice
graveled “Here, kitty, kitty.”

Catwoman turned—and tried to freeze her features rather than register
surprise. A caped, masked figure was approaching from the Batmobile
hangar, but it was no “Batman,” surely: The gray feathered cape and
the emblems on his chestplate and belt presumably alluded to an owl.
The mask was more of a helmet. And the aura of sexy intensity that
Batman exuded was replaced by something strangely unappetizing—a feeling
Selina couldn’t help but associate with the goggles that covered his
eyeslits.

“Owlman,” she guessed aloud.

“Such formality, you conniving
alleycat. I guess you heard there was something for you in tonight’s
plunder. One day I’ll find out who your spy is. Gordon?
Grayson maybe? Then your only cut of the booty will be cut out of his
gizzard.”

Selina said nothing but quietly logged the terminology and the general
tone—which seemed like Hugo Strange meets Long John Silver.

“Good. Cat’s learning to hold
her tongue,” he said, reaching into the belt and pulling out a perfectly
ghastly necklace which looked as if it matched the diamond cuffs she wore.
“Tonight’s catnip,” he said in an oily voice, holding the necklace up by the
tip and dangling it in front of her face like a hypnotist’s watch. “If
you please me. What do you think of it, my prize pussy?”

“It’s a dog collar,” she noted flatly.

He smiled wide, revealing entirely too many teeth, and Selina fought the
rising nausea. Not only was this Owlcreep not Batman, he wasn’t even
Bruce.

“Woof,” he said, turning his back on her and walking towards the
workstation. “We’ll start with a drink and a foot rub. Then
we’ll see.”

Catwoman raised an eyebrow and considered the possibilities of a cocktail
shaker as a blunt instrument.

He sat, and Selina watched in appalled fascination as he took a small
packet from his utility belt, took the mirror and miniature blade from the
drawer, and (assuming that white powder was the same in this crazy reality
as in hers) methodically cut two perfectly parallel lines of cocaine…
Selina told herself it was an advantage: an opponent’s reflexes blunted by a
chemical high. She told herself that outweighed the shock to her own
system watching Batman (or something very like him) casually snorting coke.

Of course, it wasn’t that much
crazier than his dangling that necklace in front of her saying “We’ll start
with a foot rub” like she was the owlcave slavegirl. Again, she
considered the bludgeoning options with a cocktail shaker.

“You’ll rub what I tell you, Pussycat,” he growled, as if he was
surprised but excited by something. “Make me that drink, and get your
talented whiskers over here. I expect you to be creative tonight.
Collar has ten times the diamonds in those bracelets you conned me out of.”

Lacking claws, Catwoman picked up the vodka bottle in one hand, the
vermouth in the other, and casually smashed them against the side of the
bar.

Owlman started at the sound of breaking glass, but sitting as he was at
the workstation, he only got as far as swiveling the chair in her direction
before Catwoman had lunged at him, holding the one jagged bottle fiercely
against his throat and the other between his legs.

“Take off the helmet,” she repeated, adding an ironic, “Please.”

“Well now,” he hissed. “We
finally did find a bad girl in there.” He made some sort of
deep-throated rumble that almost sounded like a purr. Catwoman
realized, to her horror, that he was turned on. “So you’ve given up
the feeble tricks with sleeping pills and drugged claws, eh, Kitty?
You ready to take me on for real?”

A viciously fast—and viciously hard—backhand sent her hurling across the
cave. She easily dodged two attempts to kick her while she was down,
and managed to topple his balance on the second just long enough to regain
her feet.

“Kitty’s learned a new trick,” he oozed hatefully. “Bout time.”

“You talk too much,” she answered.

He charged—an angrier and more violent attack than Batman had ever
attempted—which made it much easier to counter. A simple aikido lead
redirected his momentum and sent him sprawling past her. She stepped
back and waited for the next assault. It came—angrier than the first
and easier still to deflect. Again, she took a step back and waited.
Attack and deflect. Attack and deflect. Remaining wholly
defensive, she would wait then react for as long as it took. He was
obviously much stronger than she—Attack and deflect—and redirecting the
force of his attacks, all that strength from all those muscles—Attack and
deflect—and no doubt spurred on by the copious amounts of cocaine pumping
through his system—Attack and deflect—helped by gravity on occasion—Attack
and deflect—Owlman found himself stumbling past her, or onto the floor, time
and again.

When she noticed his breathing quickening, she smiled sweetly and meowed,
knowing that would enrage him all the more.

“HELLCAT BITCH!” he snarled before the next charge.

“A bitch is a dog,” she noted once she’d led him yet again to the floor.

He rolled over onto his back, now breathing very hard.

“A girl normally loves a man who can go all night,” she purred, “but this
is getting really tiresome.” He charged six more times, clearly
tiring… until, at last, when he rolled onto his back, he just laid there,
panting up at her.

“You won’t get the necklace this way, you stupid puss. You’ll have
to come and get it… from my belt…” He paused and licked his lips.
“…with your teeth.”

“Tempting, but no,” Catwoman hissed. “Take off that mask. I
want to know who you are, and I want to know what you did to Bruce Wayne.”

Owlman’s lip twitched—which was the most horrifying development so far as
far as Selina was concerned—but it was an expression of twisted rage, not
subdued amusement. Involuntarily, she took a step back.

“Where did you hear that name?” Owlman asked, the voice as warped with
hatred as AzBat’s had been.

“You first,” Catwoman challenged him. “The mask—off.”

He charged with a wild, furious cry, and Catwoman coolly stepped out of
his way, not bothering with a more complicated defense. Instead,
having allowed him to remain standing this time, she stepped directly in
front of him. He was shorter than Batman, just enough that they stood
eye to eye—at least, they would have if not for those damnable goggles he
wore.

“This is no longer a game, Selina,” he said in a deep, deadly voice
dripping with menace. “You’re here because you please me. Of all
the women I’ve bested, I brought you to this cave to serve me. I let
you earn the gems you covet because it amuses me to do so. I’ve grown
accustomed to that…” he looked up and down her body, leering grotesquely,
“…luscious body and what you can do with it, and it would truly pain me to
never have it again. But if you ever use that talented tongue of yours
to speak that name again, I will snap your neck like a toothpick.”

Catwoman didn’t flinch.

“So you kill, too,” she noted calmly.
“But you’re not stupid, that part seems the same. Has it really
not occurred to you yet, you repulsive brute, that I am not your Catwoman.”

He considered this for a moment. Selina could see the gears
turning, just like at home with her own Bruce considering a new idea.
But the obvious years of cocaine and (who knows what else) abuse had slowed
and dulled the process. As if in reaction to her thoughts, his right nostril
flared and twitched a few times until he sniffed harshly. Finally, the
leering grin returned.

“That would explain the new edge,” he said lustily. “Selina’s tame.
You’re not tamed… yet.”

Catwoman smiled agreeably.

“I tell you what, Stud, I won’t use the name you don’t want to hear, you
don’t say mine.”

He laughed heartily—which was even freakier than the lip-twitch.

“So… Catwoman… You’ve got game,
honey. And you’re actually… ‘bad?’ That does suggest some
interesting possibilities… What would you do to get a diamond
collar, I wonder.”

She met his eye squarely. “I’d attach a jammer to the Phoenix relay
on Cartier’s roof, pop the vent hood over the power conduits, left, down,
left, left, down, right and squiggle—drop out in the corridor between the
private showroom and the main vault—0010-048-73—diamond necklace. NOW,
will you please, in the name of all things feline and furry, take off that
fucking mask.”

“Sweet mother, you swear too!”
he cheered. “Me-owl, pussycat, we are gonna get on great.”

Karma tapped Selina on the shoulder as the memory of a hundred rooftop
come-ons flashed through her mind: all Batman wanted was to grunt-get on
with the crimefighting, and she had teased and tweaked and baited him with
her endlessly playful propositions. Sensing that grunt-scowl-“enough”
was unlikely to discourage this caped cokehead any more than it would her,
Selina decided another approach was called for.

“Could we possibly dispense with the foreplay,” she suggested, playing a
hunch. “In my world, real men like to skip to the good part.”

It worked. A density shift occurred. It wasn’t like Bruce’s
transition to Bat-mode; more like a stand-up comic finishing a set and
stepping off the stage. He smiled obligingly—again displaying too many
teeth—and gamely removed the mask…

Selina gasped. As she suspected,
the face before her wasn’t Bruce, but it was startlingly familiar.
It was the image of Thomas Wayne’s portrait over the fireplace in the study.

“Bruce was my brother,” he said seriously. “He and my mother were
shot in an alley, while my father, the coward, did nothing.”

Selina took a step back, unable to conceal her shock. “He’s dead?”
she whispered.

Owlman nodded, a crazy hate coming into his eye.

“Never saw his eleventh birthday,” he said bluntly.

Selina blinked away a tear.

“So,” he said shrewdly. “You’ll
mourn for my brother. We have that in common… Selina.”

“If Bruce is dead, there’s nothing for me to do here,” she murmured,
taking a step away.

“Wait! No!” he growled, grabbing her wrists forcefully just as
Bruce had done when he gave her the sapphire. “So in your world, it’s
me that’s buried on the hill with her, is it? Did Bruce avenge us?
Did he become Owlman? Did he find the gunman? Did he kill our
father? Did he? DID HE?!”

“Tommy, then. Goodbye, Tommy. There’s nothing we can do for
each other.”

She thrust her knee brutally into his stomach –once, –twice, –three
times, then pushed him away and ran towards the main cavern and the
oil-burners that represented her link back to reality. Her world, the
real world, the real Batcave and the real Bruce. She raced into the
circle of cats—

“Comeon-comeon-comeon,” she breathed as Owlman cursed and charged after
her.

The whirlpool of color appeared again on the far wall of the cave.
It looked transparent at first, but grew larger and more solid much faster
than before, the swirling intensity as it consumed the cave was far more
powerful, and Selina felt her equilibrium sucked into it…

It didn’t feel like she’d
passed out. There was a momentary swoon only

and then,

suddenly,

everything was fine.

She breathed.

…well, maybe not fine, she
seemed to have a throbbing lump under her mask and as she squinted into the
mirror—a mirror which wasn’t in the Batcave that she knew—she saw that it
was the old mask from her old skirted costume, and—yep, she was wearing the
old costume she’d only tried that one summer—and it had a cape?!
And the bump on her head really hurt. There was a calendar on the
table and, and…

Okay, her head hurt but, as far as she
could tell, her eyes were working fine and the calendar on the table
said in was October 1950…

Yikes.

And her head hurt. Boy, did her
head hurt… She thought she heard Batman’s voice saying something about amnesia—which was certainly a dumb enough cliché for it to be
1950, but that thought—along with that of turning towards the Batman voice
and seeing if he had an owl helmet and a coke habit—got lost in another
bright swirl of light…

…

Okay, that time she did pass out. That definitely felt like passing
out. That wasn’t a dimension-hopping vortex light; that was
losing-consciousness light.

She breathed again.

She was lying down.

She was still in the cave. The air smelled like cavern and she felt
cavechill, definitely… She was laying down and… cavechill on her skin and—

“Oh my god, I’m naked,” she blurted, her eyes popping open in
realization.

She peeked under the sheet that
covered her. This was worse than the owlcave slavegirl getup!
This was—this was—no mask, no costume, skirted, caped, or otherwise—this was
flat out NUDE!

Selina gathered the sheet around her and looked up—at a giant penny and a
Joker playing card.

“Trophy room,” she murmured unbelievingly. “I’m naked in the trophy
room.” She looked around again. The cave was a bit smaller than
the one she knew, and she realized with a start that it was the satellite
cave under the Wayne tower—but it was a Batcave and that was his monster
penny and his gigantic playing card and—yep, right over there was the
dinosaur. “He brought me to the Batcave and has me naked in the trophy
room,” she murmured. “Cosmic spark doesn’t get you in this universe,
Jackass, I will.”

“I was beginning to think you intended to sleep forever,” she heard in a
familiar bat-gravel.

But before she could look or respond, another sudden whirlwind of color
opened underneath her and began sucking her into its depths…

“Here, you’d better put this on,” she heard as a wad of purple landed on
her legs. “You’re lucky I kept one of your old costumes in my trophy
room.”

Then the whirling sensation intensified and—

This time, again, it didn’t feel like she’d passed out.

Just that momentary swoon, and then,

suddenly,

everything was fine.

She breathed.

She breathed.

She breathed.

She was wearing the pink sapphire again

—and Bruce’s sweater over her favorite long-sleeve t-shirt.

Home.

Whew.

She breathed again. She was home.

Meow.

She checked the stalactite. Bats clung to it. And she smiled
at them. Meow.

“Remember boys, you’re nothing but flying mice,” she told them with a
contented purr, “but you’re better than birds. Meow.”

Meow.

Home. Meow.

She found Bruce in the library, alive and well and poring over what
looked like a reference book of runes and a thick binder labeled Wayne
Foundation #81542: GENEVA PROJECT; STRING THEORY.

“Honey, I’m home,” she murmured lightly.

He looked up, and Selina saw that same
estranged look from the study before she’d left. Hell. In her
euphoria to be away from the Owlcreep, she’d almost forgotten that
unspeakable barrier that still hung between them. Bruce, we need to
talk about Zatanna… Hell.

“Doing some light reading?” she quipped, taking refuge in the rooftop
playfulness she’d always thrown at his ponderous stonewalling.

“Yes,” he noted, all distant bat. “I wanted to brush up before Dr.
Luthor arrives. He really is an astonishingly gifted theorist—”

“Who?” Selina asked, unconsciously taking a half-step back.

“Luthor. If it weren’t for his willingness to pursue the magic
angle, I don’t see that we’d ever be able to—”

“LUTHOR?!”

Bruce’s eyeballs only flickered upward while he remained poised over the
book.

“You know him?”

“LEX Luthor?”

“Lewis. Selina what’s gotten into you?”

“shit,” she muttered, looking down at
the sapphire on her finger… and noting for the first time there was only a
single baguette on each side instead of three… This wasn’t home.
This wasn’t her sapphire. This wasn’t her Bruce. She took the
folder from his desk and leafed through it, her mind racing. A few
pages in, she came to a curriculum vitae for Lewis Luthor…
Princeton, University of Metropolis, Cornell, Fullbright Scholar, Fermi
Prize, DESY, CERN… Underneath, there was a photograph. Her feeble joke
from that early morning physics lecture echoed in her mind.

So no separate universe where Lex
Luthor has hair?

But there it was: the spitting image of Lex Luthor with a receding
but respectable mop of curly red hair.

She set the folder back on the desk
and returned her attention to Bruce.

“When you gave me this ring,” she said
cautiously, touching the sapphire like an alarm panel she was only half-sure
was deactivated. She looked up quizzically, but he was just waiting
for her to go on. “…You grabbed me. You were holding on pretty
tight.” This wasn’t her Bruce. Maybe here she could say
it to him. “Like you used to.” It wasn’t her Bruce. It
wasn’t her Batman. She could say it here. She had to say it.
“Like you were afraid I’d slip away.”

“What’re you getting at?” he graveled.

Batvoice. This was no grinning
Call-me-Tommy Owlman. This was Bruce Wayne. This was Batman.
And she had to say it to him.

“You think Zatanna did something to change me.”

He froze for a moment, staring directly at her. A cold silence passed
between them for a few agonizing seconds, and then, he finally spoke.

“No.”

“What she tried with Dr. Light,” Selina said calmly.

“No.”

“What she did to that Flash villain in Keystone.”

“I said no.”

“Doesn’t matter what you say, Bruce. You think that’s what
happened. You think everything that’s happened with us is based on a
lie?”

“…”

It was agonizing, those naked searching eyes in the silence, the real
human being from the vault, then the cold steel of Psychobat slamming down
in front of them. And then, in a blink, the steel dissolved, and that
haunted vulnerability was back. Selina felt like she was driving a
spike into everything she’d ever loved. But what choice was there?
The words were spoken. There was no going back. She could only
continue forward.

“The worst kind of lie, too,” she said crisply. “A magic lie.”

“If it’s true,” Bruce said, his voice barely breaking a whisper on the
words, then building in Bat-determination, “if it’s not your choice to be
with me, then I had no right to touch you.”

She shook her head and emitted a not-amused chuckle.

“You really are a jackass,” she
breathed affectionately. “Let me ask you something,” she asked gently.
“When did it start with us, the very first spark that was…” she
stopped and searched for a way to phrase it “…that was ‘man and woman,’ not
‘criminal and crimefighter?’ In your mind, when was it?”

He looked away and didn’t answer.

“Top of the train station, first night?” she prompted.

“The easy way or the hard way,” he
said ironically, half-expecting her to repeat her retort: Why Batman, how
hard do you want it to get?

Instead, she responded “Nope. Even before that, for me. First
glimpse of that big patch of dark, darker than all the regular night around
it… six foot two, two hundred pounds, aura of penetrating intensity… body
like mortal sin.”

“Maybe not on its own, but it’s a start. Bruce, we were never… what
logic says we should have been. Not from that first moment. So,
next question, when did it go beyond ‘attraction’—when did it start becoming
personal?”

He turned back, eyes meeting hers, the Bat-intensity returned.

“Cartier,” he graveled.

“Cartier,” she confirmed. “You
brought something out in me that went beyond being Catwoman. ‘Being
Catwoman’ with you opened up this whole part of me that I didn’t even
know was there. And the kiss, well, that intensified it in ways I
can’t even… even now, I can’t…” She threw up her hands. “There
just aren’t words for what you do to me. And I wasn’t about to wait
around for you to make a gift of it, either. I don’t do that. I
take…” She walked up to where he stood and caressed his cheek.
“…I took… But I didn’t want it to be this greedy, one-sided
grasping. What I got from you… I wanted to give you something back.”
She stretched up, her lips dangerously close to his. “Just this once,”
she whispered.

“Don’t,” he winced as if in pain.

“It’s always been there, Bruce. Long before Zatanna came along.”

Rather than return the kiss she was begging for, he touched her lips with
his fingertip.

“You didn’t stop stealing that night,” he said coldly.

“That’s what you’re planning with Dr. Lei… with Dr. Luthor, isn’t it?
You want to see the moment when I stopped stealing. You want to
conduct a seeing ritual with Dr. Luthor to touch that moment and see if
Zatanna’s magic was involved.”

The whirlpool of color slowed and faded as the cave solidified, and
Selina reached out to steady herself on the wall of the transporter tube.
Instead, her hand touched the bat insignia.

She looked at him, searched his yes, and checked her ring finger in a
panic—pink sapphire. She scrutinized it with a jewel thief’s expert
eye: four carat, radiant cut center stone, classic Cartier setting… four
prongs, small round diamond about three-quarter carat on each side, followed
by three short baguettes—so far, so good.

“Get Dr. whatshisname on the phone,” she said urgently.

“Dr. Leiverman?”

Muscles relaxed and uncoiled from her neck down through her shoulders.

“Yes, Dr. Leiverman,” she sighed in relief. “But never mind, it’s
not as urgent as I thought. Is Jason around?”

“Jason’s gone to complete some research. Etrigan and Hella are
somewhere in the house, upstairs most likely, carrying on like those couples
who sneak into the guestrooms during Foundation fundraisers.”

“On our own for the moment then?” Catwoman murmured. “Just as well…
We are so screwed.”

“We knew that,” Batman noted.

“We didn’t know ‘Luthor screwed,’” she
said seriously. “I just got back from one of the problem worlds.
Was identical to this in almost every way. Except Dr. Leiverman
was a Luthor.”

“No, his name was Lewis,” Selina answered flatly. “But I saw a
picture, and it was Lex Luthor.” Her eyes flashed up at Batman’s
before adding, “with hair.”

“How… wonderfully bizarre,” Dr. Leiverman remarked.

“Dr. Leiverman,” Batman cut in, in the
businessman-Bruce voice, “I must stress that your politics are of no concern
to me. Nothing said here can affect your continued employment with the
Wayne Foundation. I must ask you, as a scientist and for the sake of
the hypothetical… well, there are many people here who consider Lex Luthor
to be… um, well, evil. If he is involved, as you are involved,
in some alternate dimension’s version of the ritual we began with Jason
Blood—”

“Seeing as the anomalies in your house began with that ritual, that they
seem to be centered on the house, yes, I would say that ritual is the key
and the involvement of a Luthor counterpart to myself is… troubling.”

“Well, I’ve mentioned it now.
There was no Jason involved. No dire warnings or moonstones or witch
orbs. You had invited Luthor to the house on your own, not in response
to Jason, and I wasn’t to be involved. You wanted me to go shopping.
Bruce, it was you and Luthor alone that were going to perform the
ritual in that world.”

He stared into the distance, and then very softly, grunted.

“Maybe that’s why Jason could sense
it,” he mused finally. “Multiple Bruce/Luthors in multiple dimensions,
acting at the same moment. But this world is different. Here it
was you and Jason—and Etrigan. You saw ‘it’ in the water,
Etrigan sensed something, Jason had those premonitions… We can see it
because we’re—” He stopped and took a sharp breath that would have
sounded like a laugh in another man. Then he continued excitedly.
“What Dr. Leiverman said about the other dimensions not being perceptible to
us, it’s all point of view. We were different, just by a few
degrees, maybe, but enough that we could see, or sense, that the crisis is
occurring.”

KREEEEEEE

“I have to go back,” Selina said looking towards the clock passageway
that echoed again with Canary Cry. “One problem world down, but who
knows how many still to go.”

“Not yet,” Batman declared. “We rushed into this dimension-hopping.
Selina, that’s why I brought you back. It’s all too random, leaving it
up to the magic forces to whisk you into whatever reality it wants.
It’s foolish and dangerous, and we’re not doing it again. Jason is
looking for a way to tether you to the spark so you’ll only jump into worlds
that are… pertinent.”

“You brought me back?” Selina
asked suspiciously.

He nodded.

“Once I got the tether idea, I had Jason modify the portal so it would
bring you back on your next jump. He wasn’t sure it worked, but it
obviously did.”

Their eyes met, and Selina remembered his comment that he’d experienced
dimensional travel. He had some inkling, perhaps, of the crazy worlds
she was seeing.

“You going to get all cocky and arrogant if I admit that I like this
idea, that I’m all in favor of the minimize-the-random plan?” she asked
quietly.

His lip twitched and it seemed like he wanted to say something, but
relapsed into a stoic bat-brood. Then he grunted, and Selina smiled.

“I have to call Clark,” he graveled suddenly. “If Luthor was
involved in other worlds, we should find out what he’s been doing in this
one.”